Use eCloud theme on nextcloud instance

Using /e/OS Self Hosting
1

Hi there,

First of all I would like to point out that I really love the e.foundation project. Almost all of my devices habe /e/OS installed.

I also used the self-hosted ecloud on a VPS server for a while but I have switched to yunohost now, mainly because I can install several other apps on my VPS next to nextcloud, e.g. a coturn server for talk, SOgo mail client, guacamole librephotos etc.

Of course it would be a great thing if the self-hosted ecloud could be installed as a docker image via yunohost (this has been proposed several times in the forum, I just add a vote for it), but as long as this is not the case, I am using the “regular” nextcloud (I put regular in quotes, because yunohost does not seem to have the latest version of nextcloud) with my /e/ devices. This works pretty well.

However, I would like to mimic the look and feel from ecloud in nextcloud as good as possiblem that e.g. logo, colour scheme, icons etc. I have tried both, copying the ecloud theme to my “themes” directory in nextcloud and pointing to it in the config.php (‘theme’ => ‘eCloud’) and also I have used the content of server.css from core/css · master · e / infra / nextcloud-theme · GitLab in the theming app of nextcloud, having the app “Custom CSS” installed, which integrates CSS to the design setting of the theming app. Both ways couldn’t make an exact copy of the ecloud appearance, in particular, icons keep disappearing, I cannot integrate the custom menu the way ecloud does etc.

Is there a way I can mimic ecloud-design 100% with nextcloud?

Thanks
εpsilon

2

Hi !

Just a reminder : /e/ Cloud is not just Nextcloud :wink:

Anyway, please take a look here : e / infra / nextcloud-theme · GitLab.

3

yeah, I realised it now as well. There is no seemless integration with nextcloud as it is with /e/ cloud. So probably I go with /e/ cloud instead of yunohost, but can I install further software on my VPS without having influence on my /e/ cloud installation?

4

As long as you don’t have any conflict on resources, no problem (Captain Obvious inside :laughing: ).

Apart from the obvious disk/CPU/RAM, the tricky part is network, especially ports : 80(HTTP) and 443(HTTPS) are handled by the Dockerized NGINX (I excluded other ports like SMTP, IMPAP, etc because there are only web apps in your list).

From there you have 2 solutions:

  1. buy an additional public IP address (can be managed by the existing DNS domain), and use it for your supplemental apps, installing them as you want
  2. run your apps in Docker, either from Hub or from yourself, and add entries in NGINX reverse proxy for them

Whatever you choose, of course you’ll have to add DNS sub-domain entries, SSL certificates, … But it’s not relevant for this subject. However, selfhosted /e/ Cloud can help with certificates :wink:

NB 1 : method 2 is safer, as you’ll benefit from NGINX reverse proxy protection for your apps, along with centralized logging (useful for tools like CrowdSec, currently experimenting on this one).
NB 2 : you may also benefit from the MariaDB, Redis Docker engines integrated with /e/ Cloud :slight_smile:

I documented a simple app some time ago : |HowTo] Add a webapp as a sideload of /e/ self-hosted cloud (some details may not be up to date, but the method is still valid).
I recently installed Guacamole (yes, I love :avocado: :smiley: ), beside of some other web apps, onto my /e/ Cloud. I could share details with you.

I got no major problem with my Docker apps when upgrading /e/ Cloud, as all necessary configuration was externalized in Docker volumes and .env file.

Of course, method 2 implies some extra work, but this is compensated by the ease of administration and the availability of resources provided by /e/ Cloud.

5

As a side note (not tested) : a Dockerized app may directly use the host network (bypassing Docker network management), but it’s not recommended for security concerns.

6

How did you manage to separate the e-mail (e.email) from the /e/ cloud domain (ecloud.global)?

7

Self-hosted /e/ Cloud is not designed that way, It’s mostly designed as all-in-one …

As far as I know, /e/ Cloud with e.email and ecloud.global domains (operated by /e/ Team) is a more complicated infrastructure, with many servers.

Anyway, if you want a separate email domain I think it may be possible with self-hosted, you will just have to spend some time in admin parameters and/or install script customization.
You should take extra care with the reverse PTR record for you public IP address, that is critical for email.

I wish I had more free time to fire up a testing server :frowning:
If you really need that I could manage to test it and post back, but please don’t expect any soon …